Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Evanescence - Call Me When You're Sober


"Call Me When You're Sober" is an alternative rock song recorded by the American band Evanescence. It was released on September 25, 2006 on the radio as the first single from the band's second studio album, The Open Door.

In late July of that year, the song and the music video were leaked on to the internet before their official release dates. "Call Me When You're Sober" has reached the Top 5 on the Canadian BDS Airplay charts and the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 Top 10, where it first debuted at number 25 marking the band's highest Hot 100 debut to date. On August 28, it reached number one on MTV's TRL, marking the first time an Evanescence single has reached the TRL top spot.

iPod Revolution


Discovery Channel documentary 'The iPod Revolution' goes behind the scenes to uncover how Steve Jobs brought Apple back from the grave to create one of the most popular electronics devices ever made: the iPod.

Putting Weirdness to Work: Quantum Information Science



KITP Public Lecture Series: Putting Weirdness to Work: Quantum Information Science

Quantum physics, information theory, and computer science are among the crowning intellectual achievements of the 20th century. Now, a new synthesis of these themes is underway. The emerging field of quantum information science is providing important insights into fundamental issues at the interface of computation and physical science, and may guide the way to revolutionary technological advances.

The quantum laws that govern atoms and other tiny objects differ radically from the classical laws that govern our ordinary experience. In particular, quantum information (information encoded in a quantum system) has weird properties that contrast sharply with the familiar properties of classical information. Physicists, who for many years have relished this weirdness, have begun to recognize in recent years that we can put the weirdness to work: There are tasks involving the acquisition, transmission, and processing of information that are achievable in principle because Nature is quantum mechanical, but that would be impossible in a less weird classical world. John Preskill will describe the properties of quantum bits ("qubits"), the indivisible units of quantum infor- mation, and explain the essential ways in which qubits differ from classical bits. For one thing, it is impossible to read or copy the state of a qubit without disturbing it. This property is the basis of "quantum cryptography," wherein the privacy of secret information can be founded on principles of fundamental physics.

Revolution OS



Revolution OS is a 2001 documentary film made in the United States, directed by J.T.S. Moore, which traces the twenty-year history of GNU, Linux, and the open source and free software movements. It features interviews with prominent hackers and entrepreneurs (and hackers-cum-entrepreneurs), including Richard Stallman, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds, Larry Augustin, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, Frank Hecker and Brian Behlendorf.

The film begins in medias res with glimpses of Raymond, a Linux IPO, Torvalds, the idea of Open Source, Perens, Stallman, then sets the historical stage in the early days of hackers and computer hobbyists when code was shared freely. Change came soon in 1978 as Bill Gates, in his Open Letter to Hobbyists, pointedly prodded hobbyists to pay up. Stallman relates his struggles with closed-source vendors at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, leading to his departure to focus on the development of free software, and the GNU project.

The First 1000 Days: Cassini Explores The Saturn System



Carolyn Porco Carolyn, leader of the imaging science team on the Cassini mission at the Google Tech Talks in May 23, 2007

A glistening spaceship, with seven lonely years and billions of miles behind it, glides into orbit around a ringed, softly-hued planet. A flying-saucer shaped machine descends through a hazy atmosphere and lands on the surface of an alien moon, ten times farther from the Sun than the Earth.

Fantastic though they seem, these visions are not a dream. For seven years, the Cassini spacecraft and its Huygens probe traveled invisible interplanetary roads to the place we call Saturn. Their successful entry into orbit a thousand days ago, the mythic landing of Huygens on the cold, dark equatorial plains of Titan, and Cassini's subsequent explorations of the saturnian environment are already the stuff of legend. What they have shown us thus far, and the images they have collected, are being closely examined in the pursuit of precise scientific information on the nature of this very alien planetary system.

This presentation will highlight the findings returned by these emissaries from Earth to the enchanting realm of Saturn.

Hubble: 15 Years of Discovery



On April 24th, 2005 the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope will have been in orbit around the Earth for 15 years. In many ways Hubble is the most successful scientific project in the World, and this event is not likely to go unnoticed. The European Space Agency, ESA, has decided to celebrate this anniversary with the production of a Hubble 15th Anniversary movie called Hubble - 15 Years Of Discovery. The movie covers all aspects of the Hubble Space Telescope project: a journey through the history, the trouble and the scientific successes of Hubble.

This portrait of one of the biggest scientific projects of all time contains large amounts of previously unpublished footage in uncompromised quality. With the beautiful backdrop of Hubble’s visual image treasures running as a red line through the movie, the light and dreaming style tells the most interesting stories about our fascinating Universe and about the change of vision that Hubble has brought us. The movie is accompanied by custom-made music that is second to none in quality and aesthetic expression.

Friday, May 25, 2007

The Nature of Space



KITP Public Lecture Series: The Nature of Space

For more than two thousand years philosophers, mathematicians and physicists have struggled to understand the nature of space. Kant studied the role of the human mind, mathematicians examined the logical ramifications of space and physicists investigated experimental phenomena. Einstein showed how space and time are inextricably linked. The story continues to the present day, with increasingly exotic scenarios of vibrating strings in ten dimensional space-time. Michael Atiyah will review the history and present status of the great philosophical controversies in the light of modern developments.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Facing a Challenge of the Current Era: Environmentalism


Facing a Challenge of the Current Era: Environmentalism - Featuring Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic.

President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, one of the leading market reformers of the post socialist era, will be speaking at the Cato Institute about contemporary environmental issues facing Europe and the world. Please join us for what will surely be a timely and thought-provoking address.

The Economics and Ethics of the Welfare State



The Economics and Ethics of the Welfare State - Featuring Leszek Balcerowicz, Former President of the National Bank of Poland and Former Minister of Finance, Poland.

Welfare states in rich and poor countries should be judged by their results, not their intentions. Leszek Balcerowicz will review the experiences of countries around the world and explain what he believes to be the economic and moral failings of welfare states. In developing countries, for example, there are huge gaps between ideology and practice; large welfare states in rich countries have crowded out non state social assistance and contributed to various types of inequality including high unemployment among the young. Please join us to hear reform proposals from Poland's main architect of its transition to the market.

On the Wealth of Nations



On the Wealth of Nations - P.J. O’Rourke will give a modern-day spin on The Wealth of Nations and Adam Smith’s revolutionary theories on liberty: pursuit of self-interest, division of labor, and freedom of trade. Employing Smith’s insights, P. J. will tackle such present day topics as outsourcing, blogs, central banks, and lobbyists, to name just a few. As P. J. puts it, he read The Wealth of Nations "so you don’t have to".

Monday, May 21, 2007

Global Warming: Some Convenient Facts



Global Warming: Some Convenient Facts - Featuring Patrick J. Michaels, Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies, Cato Institute, Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia and Jerry Taylor, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute. (...)

Michaels and Taylor will respond to Vice President Gore's documentary and recent congressional presentations. Michaels will discuss the artificial polarization of views on this issue into one camp of vocal alarmists and another camp that simply does not accept the notion that human activity is warming surface temperatures. The truth lies in between, which makes it politically unpopular to both poles of the discussion. Michaels will discuss the real state of the science, showing that an objective reading of both climate history and climate projections leads to the inescapable conclusion that global warming will be modest and that calls to "do something" immediately are likely to be counterproductive.

Craig Ferguson's Tribute to Sean Connery


Craig Ferguson talking (from 7:00) at the American Film Institute's tribute to Sean Connery, where he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement.

Agent Smith: "Humans Are A Virus"



Agent Smith (later merely "Smith") is a fictional character featured in the Matrix film series, played by actor Hugo Weaving. The struggle between Neo and Smith ends up becoming the main plot underlying the events of The Matrix, making him the primary antagonist. (...) Agent Smith complains at one point that the Matrix and its inhabitants smell disgusting, "if there is such a thing [as smell]". Smith has a strong hatred of humans and their weakness of the flesh. He compares humanity to a virus, a disease organism that would replicate uncontrollably and eventually destroy their environment were it not for the machine intelligences keeping them in check. (...)

"I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we... are the cure."

When Sean Connery Met Michael Caine



The Late Late Show is an American late-night television talk and variety show currently hosted by Craig Ferguson on CBS. It immediately follows Late Show with David Letterman and is produced by Letterman's Worldwide Pants Incorporated in CBS Television City. The program dates to 1995, and has had three permanent hosts. (...)

A scene from "When Harry Met Sally" featuring Sean Connery and Michael Caine.

You Can't Handle The Truth



A Few Good Men, a play by Aaron Sorkin, was acclaimed on Broadway and was subsequently made into a successful film in 1992. It tells the story of military lawyers at a court-martial who uncover a high-level conspiracy in the course of defending their clients, United States Marines accused of murder. (...) The line "You can't handle the truth!" was voted the twenty-ninth greatest American movie quote of all-time by the American Film Institute.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Fundamental Physics in 2010


Perimeter Institute brings great thinkers from around the world to Canada to share their ideas on a wide variety of interesting and topical subjects. These lectures and debates are aimed at non-specialists. No mathematical or scientific knowledge is necessary or assumed. Each event is explicitly tailored for the general public and everyone is welcome to attend. (...)

Will big questions be answered when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) switches on in 2007? What will scientists find? Where might the research lead? Nima Arkani-Hamed, a noted particle theorist, is a Professor of Physics at Harvard University. He investigates a number of mysteries and interactions in nature – puzzles that are likely to have experimental consequences in the next few years via particle accelerators, like the LHC, as well as cosmological observations.

BBC Horizon - The Six Billion Dollar Experiment



In the coming months the most complex scientific instrument ever built will be switched on. The Large Hadron Collider promises to recreate the conditions right after the Big Bang. By revisiting the beginning of time, scientists hope to unravel some of the deepest secrets of our Universe.

Within these first few moments the building blocks of the Universe were created. The search for these fundamental particles has occupied scientists for decades but there remains one particle that has stubbornly refused to appear in any experiment. The Higgs Boson is so crucial to our understanding of the Universe that it has been dubbed the God particle. It explains how fundamental particles acquire mass, or as one scientist plainly states: "It is what makes stuff stuff..."

BBC Horizon - Parallel Universes




Scientists now believe there may really be a parallel universe - in fact, there may be an infinite number of parallel universes, and we just happen to live in one of them. These other universes contain space, time and strange forms of exotic matter. Some of them may even contain you, in a slightly different form. Astonishingly, scientists believe that these parallel universes exist less than one millimetre away from us. In fact, our gravity is just a weak signal leaking out of another universe into ours.

For years parallel universes were a staple of the Twilight Zone. Science fiction writers loved to speculate on the possible other universes which might exist. In one, they said, Elvis Presley might still be alive or in another the British Empire might still be going strong. Serious scientists dismissed all this speculation as absurd. But now it seems the speculation wasn't absurd enough. Parallel universes really do exist and they are much stranger than even the science fiction writers dared to imagine.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Notebook PC Explodes



We intentionally created conditions in which the Li-ON battery pack would explode inside a generic portable. The results are dramatic. There are numerous conditions where these fires can occur in real life. Faulty battery packs (driving the recalls), faulty protection circuits inside the PC, exposure to excessive heat, and blunt force are some of the major ways that this could happen to you.

James Watson: The double helix and today's DNA mysteries



Nobel laureate James Watson opens TED2005 with the frank and funny story of how he and his partner, Francis Crick, discovered the structure of DNA. The tale is full of colorful details: How Watson had planned to be an ornithologist until Schroedinger's book What Is Life? transformed him into a geneticist. The painful rejections he suffered along the way, first from Caltech and then from a certain girl. And finally, how the basic DNA model ultimately came together in just a few hours. Watson finishes with one of the topics currently making him tick: the search for genetic bases for major illnesses.

Salvador Dali on "What's My Line?"



This ten minute clip is drawn from the famous 1950s game show, and it's quite surreal. I don't use the word surreal loosely: the special guest is Salvador Dalí.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Doll Face



A machine with a doll face mimics images on television screen in search of a satisfactory visage. Doll Face presents a visual account of desires misplaced and identities fractured by our technological extension into the future.

Ferenc Cakó at SICAF 2003


Ferenc Cakó is a Hungarian sand animation artist, notable for his fluidity and economy. A video of his live performance (named Genesis) at SICAF 2003, in Seoul, South Korea, has been widely disseminated online. In this performance, Cakó retold the story of Adam and Eve with brief, successive animations.

Good Old Fashioned Violence



The Late Late Show is an American late-night television talk and variety show currently hosted by Craig Ferguson on CBS. It immediately follows Late Show with David Letterman and is produced by Letterman's Worldwide Pants Incorporated in CBS Television City. The program dates to 1995, and has had three permanent hosts. (...)

Video Games really don't compare to getting headbutted in the fresh air.

Strategic Comedy Bombs



The Late Late Show is an American late-night television talk and variety show currently hosted by Craig Ferguson on CBS. It immediately follows Late Show with David Letterman and is produced by Letterman's Worldwide Pants Incorporated in CBS Television City. The program dates to 1995, and has had three permanent hosts. (...)

300 Drunken Aussie Sailors and one comedian.

BBC Horizon - Supermassive Black Holes



A violent end for Earth? In June 2000, astronomers made an extraordinary discovery. One that promises to solve one of the biggest problems in cosmology - how and why galaxies are created. Incredibly, the answer involves the most weird, destructive and terrifying objects in the Universe - supermassive black holes. Scientists are beginning to believe that these forces of pure destruction actually help trigger the birth of galaxies and therefore are at the heart of the creation of stars, planets and all life.

Supermassive black holes are so extraordinary that until recently, many people doubted that they existed at all. The idea of giant black holes the size of the Solar System seemed more like science fiction that reality - such monsters would be so powerful that they could destroy the very fabric of the Universe. But in the last five years a series of discoveries has changed our understanding of supermassive black holes and galaxies forever.

Craig Ferguson stops the show when computer "crashes"



The Late Late Show is an American late-night television talk and variety show currently hosted by Craig Ferguson on CBS. It immediately follows Late Show with David Letterman and is produced by Letterman's Worldwide Pants Incorporated in CBS Television City. The program dates to 1995, and has had three permanent hosts. (...)

Craig Ferguson stops the taping of The Late Late Show when his touch screen computer "Is broken". It is an easy fix, much to his embarassment.

Hot Whiskey Cures Everything



The Late Late Show is an American late-night television talk and variety show currently hosted by Craig Ferguson on CBS. It immediately follows Late Show with David Letterman and is produced by Letterman's Worldwide Pants Incorporated in CBS Television City. The program dates to 1995, and has had three permanent hosts. (...) Craig gives out New Year's Scottish health tips.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

iPhone spanks Microsoft



The Late Late Show is an American late-night television talk and variety show currently hosted by Craig Ferguson on CBS. It immediately follows Late Show with David Letterman and is produced by Letterman's Worldwide Pants Incorporated in CBS Television City. The program dates to 1995, and has had three permanent hosts. (...)

Craig puts Microsoft through the fire in this tirade.

Saturday, May 5, 2007

How Nations Prosper: Economic Freedom and Doing Business in 2007



How Nations Prosper: Economic Freedom and Doing Business in 2007 - Featuring James Gwartney, Coauthor, Economic Freedom of the World: 2006 Annual Report (Fraser Institute and Cato Institute, 2006), and Simeon Djankov, Lead Author, Doing Business in 2007: How to Reform (World Bank, 2006).

Nations that are more economically free outperform less free nations in growth and levels of prosperity. James Gwartney, coauthor of the annual Economic Freedom of the World report, will review current trends and the latest research on the impact of regulations, the rule of law, and other aspects of economic freedom on the whole range of development indicators. Simeon Djankov will show how excessive bureaucratic procedures and government fees make it prohibitively expensive for the world’s poor to join the formal economy. Reform can make it easier for entrepreneurs and businesses to create wealth. Djankov will show which countries are making progress, how they are successfully reforming, and the potentially large growth opportunities they can expect.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

The X-Files Theme


The X-Files is a Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning science fiction television series created by Chris Carter, which first aired on September 10, 1993, and ended on May 19, 2002. The show was one of the American FOX network's first major hits, and its main characters and slogans (e.g. "The Truth Is Out There," "Trust No One," "I Want to Believe") became pop culture touchstones. The X-Files was seen as a defining series of the 1990s, coinciding with the era's widespread distrust of governments, interest in conspiracy theories and spirituality, and belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life.

The Simpsons and the Powers of Ten



The couch gag is a running visual joke in the opening credits of the animated television series The Simpsons. The couch gag changes from episode to episode, and usually features the Simpson family's living room couch. A typical gag features the Simpson family running into the living room, only to find some abnormality with the couch; be it a bizarre and unexpected occupant, an odd placement of the couch, such as the ceiling, or any number of other situations. In more recent seasons, the couch gags have tended to be more outlandish and absurd. (...)

One of the longer couch gags to date is "The Ziff Who Came to Dinner"'s 45-second spoof of the short film Powers of Ten. After the family runs in and sits on the couch, the camera pulls up through the roof and continues pulling back - past Springfield, the United States, Earth, the Solar System, Kang and Kodos outside their broken spaceship, and finally the entire Milky Way galaxy. As the scene continues receding, the galaxies turn into atoms, which become molecules, which become strands of DNA, which become skin cells, which become Homer's head. Homer then says "woooow" (later changed to "cool" in subsequent airings.) The early part of the sequence is accompanied by Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra on the music track, until Kang and Kodos are encountered, followed by a generally eerie and suspenseful underscoring until Homer's scalp is finally revealed.

Faster than the Speed of Light - Could the laws of physics change?



Perimeter Institute brings great thinkers from around the world to Canada to share their ideas on a wide variety of interesting and topical subjects. These lectures and debates are aimed at non-specialists. No mathematical or scientific knowledge is necessary or assumed. Each event is explicitly tailored for the general public and everyone is welcome to attend. (...)

The laws of physics are usually meant to be set in stone; variability is not usually part of physics. Yet contradicting Einstein's tenet of the constancy of the speed of light raises nothing less than that possibility. I will discuss some of the more dramatic implications of a varying speed of light. João Magueijo is Professor of Physics at Imperial College London. He is currently visiting Perimeter Institute and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto. He received his doctorate in theoretical physics at Cambridge University, and has been a visiting scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and Princeton University.

Craig Venter: A voyage of DNA, genes and the sea



Genomics pioneer Craig Venter takes a break from his epic round-the-world expedition to talk about the millions of genes his team has discovered so far, in their quest to map the ocean's hidden biodiversity. (Quite a task, when you consider that there are tens of millions of microbes in a single drop of sea water.) He updates the TED audience on his discoveries, from the 2,000 photoreceptor genes found in the Sargasso Sea to the thrill of being under house arrest in French waters. After touching on the potential of environmental genomics to monitor the safety of air, water and offshore drilling, Venter ends with his vision for engineered species that can replace the petrochemical industry by creating clean energy.

Why Darwin Matters: The Case against Intelligent Design



Why Darwin Matters: The Case against Intelligent Design - Featuring the author, Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptics Society; With comments by Jonathan Wells, Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture, Discovery Institute.

Debates over evolution range from Pennsylvania to Kansas to the University of California. Michael Shermer, a former evangelical Christian and creationist, argues that "intelligent design" theory appeals to a human predisposition to look for a designer behind life's complexity. But in fact the theory of natural selection is supported by the scientific evidence and is the foundation on which modern biology rests. Conservatives and Christians should accept evolution because it explains family values, social harmony, human nature, and the origins of morality. Jonathan Wells, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, disagrees with Shermer.

Rich like Bond villains



The Late Late Show is an American late-night television talk and variety show currently hosted by Craig Ferguson on CBS. It immediately follows Late Show with David Letterman and is produced by Letterman's Worldwide Pants Incorporated in CBS Television City. The program dates to 1995, and has had three permanent hosts. (...)

Exotic super villain pets, elephant seal mating season disrupts Craig's vacation, rabbits storm the European castles - just like the Playboy mansion.